The unimpeded Czechoslovak advance and the threat of defections from Bolshevik ranks filled Mirbach and Riezler with the gloomiest forebodings. Their fear was that the Allies would take advantage of the crisis to engineer an SR coup which would bring Russia back into the Allied fold. To prevent the catastrophe, Riezler urged Berlin to make approaches to the liberal and conservative Russians, represented by the Right Center, the Kadet Party, the Omsk Government, and the Don Cossacks.*
The alarming reports from the Moscow Embassy, added to the complaints of the military, moved the German Government to put the “Russian question” once again on the agenda. The question it faced can be formulated as follows: whether to stick with the Bolsheviks through thick and thin because (1) they devastated Russia so thoroughly as to remove her as a threat for a long time to come and (2) by acquiescing to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty they placed at Germany’s disposal the richest regions of Russia; or else to drop them in favor of a more conventional but also more viable regime that would keep Russia within the German orbit, even if this meant giving up some of the territories acquired at Brest-Litovsk. Advocates of these respective positions disagreed over the means. Their objectives were identical—namely, so to weaken Russia that she would never again help France and England “encircle” Germany and, at the same time, lay her wide open to economic penetration. But whereas the anti-Bolshevik party wanted to attain these objectives by carving Russia up into dependent political entities, the Foreign Office preferred to do so by using the Bolsheviks to drain the country from within. Settling this matter one way or another was a matter of some urgency in view of the unanimous opinion of the Moscow Embassy that the Bolsheviks were about to fall.
No one in the German Government desired the Bolsheviks to stay in power for long: the dispute was over the short term, the duration of the war. The difficulty of resolving the dispute was compounded by the volatility of the Kaiser, who one day fulminated against the “Jewish” Bolsheviks and wanted an international crusade against them and the next spoke of the same Bolsheviks as Germany’s best partners.
Ludendorff pressed to have the Bolsheviks liquidated. They were treacherous: “we can expect nothing from this Soviet Government even though it lives at our mercy.” He was especially worried by the “infection” of German soldiers with Bolshevik propaganda, which, following the transfer of hundreds of thousands of troops from the east, spread to the Western Front. He wanted to weaken Russia and “claim it [for Germany] by force.”89
The Moscow Embassy sided with the military, but it recommended revisions in the Brest Treaty as a price of winning support from respectable Russian political groupings.
The contrary point of view was advanced by Kühlmann and the foreign service (except for the Moscow Embassy) with the backing of many politicians and most of the German business community. A Foreign Office memorandum, drafted in May, formulated an argument for continued collaboration with the Bolsheviks:
The pleas for German help which issue from diverse sources in Russia—mainly from reactionary circles—can best be explained by the fear of the propertied classes of the Bolshevik threat to their possessions and assets. Germany is to play the role of the bailiff who chases the Bolsheviks out of the Russian house and restores the reactionaries, who will then pursue against Germany the very same policy which the tsarist regime pursued in the last decades.… In regard to Great Russia, we have only one overriding interest: to promote the forces of decomposition and to keep the country weak for a long time to come, exactly as Prince Bismarck had done in regard to France after 1871….
It is in our interest soon genuinely to normalize relations with Russia in order to seize the country’s economy. The more we mix in this country’s internal affairs, the wider will grow the chasm that already separates us from Russia.… It must not be overlooked that the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was ratified only by the Bolsheviks, and not even by all of them.… It is, therefore, in our interest to have the Bolsheviks remain at the helm for the time being. In order to stay in power, they will, for now, do all they can to maintain toward us the appearance of loyalty and to keep the peace. On the other hand, their leaders, being Jewish businessmen, will before long give up their theories in favor of profitable commercial and transport practices. Here we must proceed slowly but purposefully. Russia’s transport, industry, and entire national economy must fall into our hands.90
